Everything You Need to Know About Menopause

Book excerpt: Menopause: New Directions. No two women go through menopause in exactly the same way. One experiences hot flashes that will melt steel; other suffer chills - or one of 50 other possible mental or physical changes. In the past, most women confronted by menopause had two choices: Suffer the symptom (usually in silence), or take a hormone pill. But thanks to the startling findings of the Women's Health Initiative Study, which concluded that the potential health hazards of using Prempro, an estrogen-progesterone, combination, outweighed its benefits, and the subsequent National Toxicology Program's classification of estrogen as a carcinogen, women - and their doctors - have been thrown into turmoil.